Chapter 29: The Thames Walk: Oxford Double

This spring, The TIMES recommended the walk along the Thames Pathway from Oxford to Wolvercote (and returning along the Oxford Canal) as one of the Best Walks in England. Rated as "Easy" it makes sense to me to take the walk, so I board the bus in Caversfield and go to Oxford. This walk starts at Folly Bridge, at this point a paved, well marked route, in a residential neighbourhood.

There are too many bridges to pass under to remember, but I quickly heard the train coming so I snapped this photo of an incoming train to Oxford Station, nearby.

The concept of a public pathway without needing to pass through private property or rough ground is sensible and perfect for hikers such as me, with poor legs and limited mobility.

A canal boat passes out of Orsney Lock. The pilots tell me as he passes that it is a perfect way to enjoy retirement, and that it is a beautiful way to spend a day, "despite what's coming." He points at the sky and before I can get my rain gear from my backpack it is pouring rain! No way will I give up, so I trek onwards, quite relieved that in ten minutes the sun is shining again.
The canal passes Port Meadow and I meet only one other walker for several miles.

Closer to Wolvercote, the pathway is a well worn track through cattle pastures, with stands of great old trees. The flat lands on the other side of the Thames also provide grazing for cattle.

Many of the old oaks simply lie where they have been felled or have fallen.

The Islip Lock at Wolvercote.

Godstow Nunnery (and Abbey) was built in 1133 for nuns of the Benedictine Order. I drag from my mind the Nunnery Scene from Shakespeare's greatest play, and remember poor Ophelia being verbally assaulted by the mad Hamlet:

HAMLET Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a

breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;

but yet I could accuse me of such things that it

were better my mother had not borne me: I am very

proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at

my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,

imagination to give them shape, or time to act them

in. What should such fellows as I do crawling

between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,

all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.

William Shakespeare

Of course, it was not of Godstow that Shakespeare was thinking. It was here that one found the final burial place of Rosamund Cliford, who died in 1176, the long-term mistress of Henry II. Her tomb, in front of the high altar, became a local shrine, so the local bishop, declaring that Rosamund was a harlot, had her tomb removed to the nuns' cemetery, but it was destroyed with the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.

Rosamund is immortalised in several literary works, one being this poem from Robert Southey:

Inscription 01 - For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery

Here Stranger rest thee!

from the neighbouring towers

Of Oxford, haply thou hast forced thy bark

Up this strong stream, whose broken waters here

Send pleasant murmurs to the listening sense:

Rest thee beneath this hazel; its green boughs

Afford a grateful shade, and to the eye

Fair is its fruit: Stranger! the seemly fruit

Is worthless, all is hollowness within,

For on the grave of ROSAMUND it grows!

Young lovely and beloved she fell seduced,

And here retir'd to wear her wretched age

In earnest prayer and bitter penitence,

Despis'd and self-despising: think of her

Young Man! and learn to reverence Womankind!

Robert Southey

The abbey became a private home, Godstow House, but was ruined in 1645 in the Civil War. After that stones were removed by locals for their own buildings, and later the grounds were used when animals from Port Meadow were being rounded up.

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) used to bring Alice Liddell and her sisters here for picnics, after afternoon boating on the Thames from Oxford.

According to some, the site is haunted by Rosamund, known as the Grey Lady.

I stop at The Trout Inn, the 17th Century Free House in Wolvercote. The TIMES had said it was excellent and popular, and half-way along the Walk. It is better than anticipated, and I thoroughly enjoy a mushroom and bacon spaghetti. The brochure tells of its history:

Famous long time before it was immortalised in Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels, The Trout Inn has been wonderfully restored so that it is now the individual pub it always should have been. With a rich literary history, it is easy to see why The Trout Inn is a pub of dreams; from Lewis Carroll to CS Lewis you can understand why so many people have sat on the banks of the Thames staring into the fast moving waters and watching the world drift by [which must be a mixed metaphor!]

There are tourists here, of course, and quite a number of Oxford students. I suspect this is not where the locals come for their draught of Brakspeare.

Leaving The Trout and the Thames, I walk through Lower Wolvercote, find the stairs from the train bridge and walk down to the Oxford Canal. Here I find right off another canal boat passing through a tiny lock--only inches wider than the boat!

The Oxford Canal, which runs 130 km, links Oxford with Coventry. Once it was a major commercial link, the boats drawn by horses or mules, bring goods and coal to Oxford. Now it is exclusively a waterway for recreation, with dozens of canal boats--many seemingly lived in--moored along the banks.

The closer to Oxford, the more walkers and bikers I see. (Plus police who are tying a boat up as I pass by. Minutes later, I pass a rather rough looking couple hiding in a clump of trees nearby, the woman telling her partner, "The cops have got it tied up again." Goodness knows, but I move on.)

The canal runs through the back yards of residential sections of the city. It must be wonderful to have your canoe and other boats moored in the back, the front of your house opening unto the busy main street!

This family even has a full-sized canal boat in their yard.

This last section into Oxford was opened on 1 January 1790. Here it arrives at a dead-end, although it used to open into a large docking and turning "pond" now overbuilt by one of the colleges and parking lots. A memorial marks the spot. Up a set of stairs and I am in the centre of Oxford, just behind Oxford Castle. My legs are tired but I am happy I have done this walk, and intend to walk the Thames section again.